A belated Halloween cast with our dear friend Kailey Tedesco! Dorothea Lasky's "The Shining" is the book, along with the soundtrack to the film "I Saw the TV Glow" and Conshohocken Brewery's "Nightmare on East Elm Street" pumpkin beer. Nick, Daniel and Kailey address art informing and used in other art as well as why these past few months have been so goddamn tough. Enjoy!

The boys are back for this one! Nick Gregorio joins us to talk super heroes, male friendship, and what abv is just too much. Some fun facts about The Veils are dropped and Nick M. finds himself in a very mega way by the end. Cheers!

Billy Joel is back, along with male fragility washed down with a Tastykake infused brew. Shit got weird.

"Fantasia is the first music video" ... - Daniel Difranco Season 8 is going to be great. -NM

Our 7th annual Franco Christmas Cast!!! Such a pleasure to welcome Franco Fiorini into the basement for another holiday cast. We started with store brand (it's fine) peppermint espresso poured over vodka and called a martini and it was delish. We could not handle the album. At all. Nor will you, but we should all give it another listen to be sure. Dickens crushed as usual, and this vingette seven years senior to his seminal Christmas Carol lets us, the modern reader, into his affection for...

A very special spooky cast with the always lovely Kailey Tedesco! Author of a new book of poetry about the mother of the Jersey Devil, Kailey picked an incredible cast for us. A translated story from Korean author Bora Chung, the 2014 offered from Button:Pusher, and the Von Trapp brewing keystone Vienna Lager. We chat childbearing, birth control, loss, and that weird time when She and Him dominated the airwaves.

This month we're joined by Tik Tok sensation, Nick Perilli, to discuss cosmic horror, classical music, and a seasonal offering from New Ridge Brewing.

A couple of paisanos dig into the gorgeous and anti-linear LEONE by Giandomenico and Colafella and somehow find their way to Mitamu's incredible debut Sunflower in the east, all while drinking that Italian standby, Peroni.

Nick and Dan dig into Kristen Arnett's debut short story collection "Felt in the Jaw" from Split Lip Press. Consumption and self indulgence with a suburban backdrop coupled with a dollop of copulation and (warning) sexual abuse. There was a lot to unpack. Nick then unveils the rare find from a Youtube hole "The Flying Lesbians" and the fanboy-ing begins. Here it is: https://youtu.be/sqhlRo1fiH0 ENJOY! Then we drink some beers. Cheers! Happy belated PRIDE to all. We love you. Goodnight.

A lil Nick and Dan cast! Do we need others? What makes a great artist? What kills a great artist? Can you dig it?

A lil Nick and Dan cast to start our seventh season of Book Record Beer. This was a joy. Kirsten Reneau's gorgeous "Meeting Gods in Basement Bathrooms and Other Ways to Find Forgiveness" is a f*****g gift of a chapbook and we dig in substantially to themes of loneliness and reconciliation, among others. Tom Waits' "Alice" takes the record portion of the cast as a soundtrack to a play that prompts the dudes to consider what it means to be a creative, particularly a weird one. And in honor of...

2 Nicks 1 cast. A BHM cast focused on a novel in verse entitled Punching the Air by one of the exonerated 5 Yusef Salaaam and poet Ibi Zoboi, Dead Prez's seminal 2000 album "Get Free" and Partake brewing's IPA. The Nick's chat about radical insight and change, the purpose of art, and what remains. We hope you enjoy and love you for listening.

Our dear friend Franco Fiorini joins us once more for our annual holiday cast. The irking story for A Christmas Story in Jean Shepherds "In God We Trust All Others Pay Cash" is lapped up like an 8th glass of wine while Bing Crosby's manifest destiny of an album, "A Christmas Story" is run over like a penny on a transcontinental railroad. Hometown hero Yuengling and Hershey come together to bring back some holiday cheer as the boys cheers to another holiday past and a brilliant new year.

We welcome our dear friend Kailey Tedesco to the show and revel in her choices for this late halloween cast. Shirley Jackson's posthumous "The Possibility of Evil" is explored along with the satanic doo-wop stylings of Twin Temple and of course Tired Hands own "Hail Santa" with a fitting abc of 6.66%. Ring in the new year with some freaky shit from the old. We love you and will see you soon! A million thanks to Kailey as always for her insight and expertise!

What's a 3 month delay between friends? Part technological snafu, part scheduling conflict, and a big part of laziness is bringing you this cast...finally! This time it's just a little ol' Nick and Dan talking David Sedaris and the heart of comedy, Domi and JD Beck and pushing the art forward (in this case, jazz), and sipping on an Octoberfest...when it was fashionable to do so. Thanks for listening, and we'll be hitting your ears with Episode 8 before the month is out!

Beers! Fridge buzz! Buddies bullshitting over brews! After 18 months away from eachother, we dusted off our traveling mics to record in person. We met the poet Francis Daulerio at Forest & Main brewery and chatted about Kafka's The Metamorphosis, White Lighter's album Typhoon, and the various drinks we had at Forest & Main. Be sure to check out Fran's newest poetry collection, JOY, wherever books can get got. (psst. here—...

Up, up, and away! This month we're back at it with another graphic novel. This time it's the last Superman story you'll ever need to read with All-Star Superman. We follow it up with the lads out of Dublin, Fontaines D.C. with their third 3 release in 4 years, Skinty Fia. And finally, Daniel has an IPA he might actually like in the Dieu du Ciel Moralité. Gather up your humanity and join us. Thank you as always 🖤

Robin Black's crushing collection "If I loved You, I'd Tell You This" is the subject of this cast as we dive into her title story. Notions of love and how we spend or share it are explored along with the the very real notion that god might be fiction himself. Canadian punks White Lung give us the record for this one with their second album "Sorry". A truly excellent under 20-minute onslaught of the best Bikini Kill inspired hardcore one could imagine. Unfortunately Apple Music f****d Daniel's...

Morbid romance cast! Our dear friend Kailey Tedesco joins us with some killer picks in Carmen Maria Mechado's "The Low Low Woods" a graphic novel set in a burning Pennsylvania town. She also chose Olivia Rodrigo's album "sour" and Gregorio brings the beer with Workhorse Brewing's "Bonfire Nights" smoked lager. Trauma is the main course in this cast as the graphic novel deals with notions of inherited trauma and the act of giving consent to remember. We love having Kailey on and hope you all...

We welcome very special guest Eric Weingarten for the Daddy episode! Hours before Nick Gregorio becomes a father and months after Nick M becomes one for a second time the crew gets together to discuss Wells Tower's only fiction collection "Everything Raged, Everything Burned," Fever Ray's self-titled album and Icelandic brewery Einstok's arctic berry ale. Notion of manliness and fatherhood arise as do Gregorio's alarming difficulty with IKEA furniture.

After a brief absence from good ol' Nick M, the boys are back Thin Lizzy style with their good friend Franco for our traditional holiday cast. Season six will be an interesting one pivoting to short story collections instead of novels. (diversify baby!!) We get into UK author Angela Carter's holiday trip between myth and Puritanical rejection of joy with her story "The Ghost Ships: A Christmas Story" from her collection "American Ghosts and Old World Wonders." Nostalgia reigns as we dig into...

One of our favorites to date, the Nick's and Daniel dive into Roberto Bolano's seminal work, "The Savage Detectives" in the hopes of making sense of the enigmatic form and poetic prose. What it means to engage with art and ultimately become an artist is explored as well as the importance of paying homage to the artists that have come before and the necessity in blowing them and their work to bits. The fellas jump from the Mexico city of the detectives over to Tokyo, Japan to engage with post...

Native American myth starts this Gregorio cast with Stephan Graham Jones' acclaimed "The Only Good Indians" and moves the dudes to consider genre, sports writing, and who our Elk Head Woman might be. Pelican's "Nighttime Stories" is universally agreed to be the best soundtrack for the book, especially the horrific sweat lodge massacre scene, and sour liquid of the variety of goses and blackberry mojitos imbibed make for a delicious end to a blast of a cast. NOTE: there are a few moments of...

A very special Nick Mehalick cast, this one was done with pride. The prophet James Baldwin's brilliant "Giovanni's Room" frames the cast as the guys discuss masculinity, sexuality, the human condition, and what it means to be othered. Themes of invisible social contracts and just how dramatic we Italian's can be are explored. The soundtrack for the text, M83's "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" follows the book ala Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz, a strange trip for sure but one that is...